Saturn Day - Rum Story, Whitehaven17th July 2004

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For our second ‘space day’ of 2004 (see Mars Day for our first) we travelled down the cost to Whitehaven and set up our exhibition in the Rum Story tourist attraction. Over the years we have moved our events around the county to give access to as any people as possible.

This time the theme was Saturn, to coincide with the arrival of NASA’s Cassini Huygens probe at the ringed planet. But as usual our exhibition covered a lot more the just Saturn. Taking over a large conference room upstairs from the restaurant we have a variety of exhibits on display as well as plenty of people to give advice and answer questions.

To greet people at the door, we had one of the latest computerised telescope, finding it’s way around an imaginary night sky. Just inside the door Stuart was working hard with a display of the latest pictures from the mars rovers, including 3D pictures. Caroline was also on hand in the ‘kids corner’ answering questions and setting puzzles for our younger visitors.

Further down the hall Robin had his ‘scope set up and was demonstrating the use of webcams to capture images of the night sky. Opposite Robin, Linda was displaying her more conventional, but just as stunning, film images of comets, constellations and aurora.

At the far end of the hall were three (yes 3!) big screen projectors. Tony was giving a talk on the cassini mission itself. Chris was covering saturn websites people could use to find more information and a little of the history of Saturn exploration. Bill had bigger things in his sights, giving everyone a guided tour of the solar system using the excellent Celestia space simulation software.

Elsewhere wall were adorned with the latest images from Saturn (bearing in this was before Cassini had even really arrived at Saturn). However, as usual it was the people that made the event worthwhile. Over 150 people passed through the doors, many eager to find out more about something they’d heard of in the news but had little real information about.

Everyone in the society enjoyed the day, and judging by the comments visitors made they did too. These events are all about bringing space to more people and we always have good success with these types of events. I’m sure we’ll be organising plenty more.